Best Invention Ever

It's the peak of summer. And you know what that means?

Flies and maggots.

Because we feed our dogs BARF, there's always stray pieces of meat laying about in bags or containers that don't get thoroughly rinsed, and thus providing a lovely fetid home for the eggs of our multi-facet eyed visitors. Twice now I've made emergency runs to the dump as our garbage got infested with things fit only for eating on reality TV.

Shameful but true.

Worse, however, are the adults of the larve, aka, Musca domestica L. I'm not saying we're akin to the former farm houses of our grandparents -- where finding a few thousands dead flies in an unattended room after a month is about as normal as scratching your crotch while watching sports on TV -- nor is it even remotely as bad as the mosquito haven of our previous house -- but the bugs we've got are annoying as hell.

Last Christmas, my dad and mom bought everyone in the family a bug vacuum. These are handy do-dads you see in many home improvement-type catalogs. Some suck down spiders and bugs and put them in a baggie for you, so you can safely transport them outside. Not the one my Dad bought. This thing looks like a toilet plunger. Once a bug is sucked down into the extendable tube, it's thrown against an electrified grate, zapping him with enough juice to send a little wisp of smoke and fried insect stench wafting to the nose.

It's glorious.

I've had this vac sitting in a charger for about eight months and never thought about it, always going for my $16 Oxo Fly Swatter instead (it's got an ergonomic handle and a fancy "fly silhouette" in the corner-- it looks like a cartoon fly flew through the grate, ala Roger Rabbit). But swatters are messy. You have to scrap off the corpse and clean the guts and blood off whatever surface you smack.

Not with this vac. It's clean, easy to use, and holds a charge even better than my DustBuster. Outside of the charred flesh smell every time you turn it on, it's the perfect tool for a summer day.

New Logo

My thanks to my cousin, Jeremy, for the new logo (which I have mutilated to make fit this now 3 year old web design). Jeremy says he might also design a new look for the site, god knows it could use it. So that would be nice. If he doesn't get to it tho, I expect that to become a major project for me over the winter when I'm trapped back in the basement.

The Bus Stop

So, I'm taking a couple of adult ed classes through one of the many, many local theaters. Ithaca seems to have as many actors as activists. Anyway, one of the classes is on play writing (or when you're a playwright, is it play wrighting?) and it's taught by a guy who is having a major play produced here in town this week. For an exercise in the first class, he said: Two people are at a bus stop. One wants on the bus, the other doesn't. Write. So this is what I got.

INT. Bus Stop.

Two men in their early twenties are sitting at a bus stop.

P.
I don't understand you at all.

E.
Man, there's nothing to understand. I'm going home.

P.
Jesus! You dragged me down here in the first place!

E.
I made a mistake. I came to my senses. I'm--

P.
You are a Class-A chicken shit, is what you are.

E.
(Opens mouth, says nothing.)

P.
Yeah.

E.
Look. I'm-- Crap, I'm not happy about this. But it's too soon, you know? I'm just not ready. I don't think I'm ready.

P.
Dude. I know.

E.
I'm --- I mean it's just too soon. She's only been gone for...

P.
I know, I know.

E.
I wanted to go. I mean, I thought I was ready, you know. To move on.

P.
You know she wouldn't want you to do this, right?

E.
Do what?

P.
To give up. To not move on.

E.
(smiles)
Actually, no. I don't know that. Not a bit, bro. Because she could be a jealous, selfish bitch when she wanted...

P.
Nice way to talk about the dead.

E.
Yeah.

P.
So you loved her. She's gone. You're not. And at the other end of this bus line, someone's waiting. A future for you, maybe.

E.
Yeah.

P.
Flesh and blood. Who wants to see you. Screwed up as you are.

E.
Yeah. I mean-- Yeah. Let's go.

Let Us Eat Lattice

Yesterday, I worked.

My friend Giff spent the night Friday, so seeing him off in the morning Saturday meant I was up early. By 8am, I'd already finished painting the entirety of my back deck, a process that has been two months in the making.

(I thought I'd finished it... turns out there's a big section on the back that I didn't even seen until last night. Some projects never die.)

Since I got the deck painting done so fast, decided to take advantage of the energy burst and finish the deck all together -- this meant installing the forest green plastic lattice along the bottom edge. All the better to keep my dogs inside the fence. One in particular, Kylie, has developed something of a Houdini reputation in being able to squeeze through openings fit only for snakes.

By about 3:30, I was only half way done -- and felt completely done in. Despite dousing myself with sun block, I could feel the cellular damage to the skin on my back beginning. Sweat was dripping off me like runoff in the mountains in spring. Sweat mixed with the sun screen I'd injudiciously applied to my face, so I was blind. I'd taken to wearing a towel on my head, held in place by a baseball cap, to soak up the pounds of liquid that exited my pours (and which I resupplied with about 20 glasses of water that day). Oh, and my head was pounding. I tried to sit in my hammock but the swinging made me nauseous.

Ibuprofen. Nap. Fans. All good things I rediscovered for about an hour that afternoon.

Finally, I finished the project. I'm not 100% happy with it, but it'll do. Bon brought a friend home for dinner (she'd been at a dog agility trial all day) and her friend said "Isn't it nice to have a man around the house that can do handy things?" Bon and I just looked at each other and smiled, as we both know I'm quite useless. I admitted it too, and told her friend that I do these things because, well, I'm cheap. Which is true.

Though you can bet I'm going to hire someone to reseal my driveway, another project I was planning to tackle this summer. Somehow, pouring 5-gallong buckets of tar and spreading them all day sounds about as much fun, well, attaching plastic lattice in 90 degree heat.

Non Blogathon

I the two year anniversary of this Web log passed by quietly last month (also the two year anniversary of the death of my favorite job ever, the much mourned Access Internet Magazine... sigh).

In years previous, I really, really wanted to participate in the annual Blogathon. That's kind of like a walk-a-thon but for lazy people. You still get people to pledge their money to you if you do a certain something, but instead of walking or biking a large number of miles, the Blogaton is where bloggers sit on their ass all day long and post at least every half hour for a 24-hour period. The money pledged goes to the charity of the bloggers choice. I figured it was a good way to do something for the CBLDF. But the first year I forgot to sign up in time (and I was unemployed, so you can figure I would have had lots to blah blah about), and last year, something came up that same weekend. Probably having to do with packing the house to move.

And this year, well, obviously, I just don't have much to blog about. Finally, real life is more interestings. Or, barring that, more time consuming...

Luckily, someone else is going to benefit the Fund through the Blogathon this year (it's this weekend, July 26). Check out Mentally Incontinent (god, what a great name). Joe Peacock, the site's proprietor, intends to write a 24-hour novel that day as part of Blogathon. Well, maybe it's a novella. Anyway, sign up, and pledge your support. It's for a good cause.

Stiff as a Board

Well, that didn't take long... I got my first offer of Viagra via spam on my brand new email address today. I don't think it even took two weeks. Oh, well. You can't fight city hall, nor junk mailers.

My Trip to Intel-Land

Despite the time stamp on this entry, I'm writing it on Friday night -- really it's just past midnight on Saturday, but only on the east coast. I, however, am in the most unlikely of places -- the west coast. Namely, I'm in Portland, Oregon. I came out for a full day meeting with the folks at Intel to talk about all that they do that is wirelessly wired (if you don't understand that, you don't know or don't understand what I do for a living).

It took me 16 hours to get out here on Thursday the 10th. I left around 10:30am from home, arriving about 2:30am. Were it not for the time difference, I might never have shown for the meetings, but I got just enough sleep. Though I admit to taking advantage of chemical supplements to get me through the day: I drank an entire tiny pot of earl grey tea with my breakfast. Hot. It's a wonder I wasn't bouncing off the walls. Luckily, I managed to also spend a full 2.5 hours of the day in Portland stuck in highway traffic, so that tempered any excess energy.

Portland reminds me of Tampa/St. Petersburg, but with more hills. St. Pete, for example, has numerous places that will loan you money when you promise to sign over a check, plus many bail bond's men, seemingly on every corner. Here in Portland, on at least two I saw a "Loan for Title" place -- you keep your car, but they get the title to it after they give you some money. What is the New York State equivalent of this?

So, back to my travel woes in flying out, here's what happened: I got to the Syracuse airport with just enough time to spare. I was supposed to fly to Chicago, where I would sit for 1 hour and 15 minutes until I was on the way to Portland, scheduled to land at 8pm east coast time/5pm west. Except the Chicago flight was cancelled before I even got to Syracuse. After standing in line an extra long time as security searched all the luggage to be stowed for trace chemical elements (a new one on me since 9/11/01), I was told they'd already booked me on a flight to Dulles where I'd catch a plane there to Portland.

Dulles is a dump. I hate that airport, especially because the terminals are not interconnected -- you have to take a tram between the buildings. The tram is huge, like Frank Miller's version of the Batmobile -- think of the thing that moves the space shuttle out of the hanger, but going 30 miles per hour (still too slow). I figure if I have to suffer the indignity of moving from one terminal to another, I should at least get some exercise out of it. All right, actually, I like the moving sidewalks.

I really learned to really hate Dulles yesterday -- familiarity breeds contempt. Familiarity with gate D15, especially. The flight scheduled to leave at 4:50 was pushed back to 5:30.

Then to 6pm. Then to 7:30. Then 8.

In that time, they boarded us. Then they said we could get off, but stay close. I contemplated changing my flight all together, and getting back to NY, but that probably would have been delayed too: the east coast was being pummeled by thunder bangers worthy of Thor, apparently. You wouldn't know it sitting at D15, where the sky was overcast but far from rainy. Exactly the opposite, in fact. Dry as sand.

I was just about ready to call it all off and then at 8:30, after trying unsuccessfully to find an open Ben & Jerry's in the terminal, they reloaded us. We sat on the tarmac for another hour, many of us listening in on the provided headsets to the channel with air traffic controller talk. I heard many, many planes be released from holding, but gave it up to watch the tail end of Chicago on the ship-board LCDs. (Later I saw "Bringing Down the House" with Steve Martin and Queen Latifah. How I could witness that film and still not sleep a wink is beyond me.)

Okay, I know why I didn't sleep a wink: worst seat in the house. In the miserable prop-plane puddle jumper from Syracuse to Dulles, and then even on the nice jet out to Portland, I was in the very last row -- the one with seats that won't recline. Absolute torture. Impossible to sleep (since I do that head-knod/wake-yourself thing if I can't lean back) and just misery on my back. A father was sitting next to me and his three or four year old daughter was coloring while we chased the daylight west, but once it got permanently dark she drifted off, and shifted from seat to seat next to me, the father moving gingerly around to avoid waking her. She kicked me several times, her discomfort in lying on the seats echoing mine.

I also watched something remarkably stupid over and over in the seats one row ahead and opposite me. An absolute giant of a man, perhaps 6'4" and easily 300 pounds sat on the aisle, and was himself next to a mother and daughter. The mother was one of those post 40 chicks who wants desperately to be younger -- she had brown hair streaked with purple and was wearing one of those mid-riff showing shirts I usually find sexy on even the most zaftig of females, but lets just say she did NOT having it going on. Her daughter was about 3 or 4 also. And had to go to the bathroom at least four times.

So. Each time this happened, giant man would get up and the woman would get out of the row with the daughter. A more ungraceful display I've never seen. The woman was incapable of getting her ample ass past the reclined seats in the row in front of her. Worse yet, on at least one of these occasions, she was fully carrying her daughter, who'd shed ever ounce of clothing she had on in the beginning of the flight. If we'd taken a picture of it, the Wal-Mart photo guys could have called it kiddie porn and had us arrested, but here I was subjected to it in full, personal, force.

Over and over I saw giant dude get up as purple momma scrambled out with the child in various states of undress. One time, she just walked on the seats. He obviously had no problem sitting behind a reclined seat -- so why not offer to sit by the window? Clod. Then again, I should have thanked him, because otherwise I might have been looking at the purple haired woman's wrinkly love handles all night.

A Qualified Success

It would appear that my junking of the squishedfrog.com email address I've been using for about five years was worth it. Instead of 150 spam in my email this morning, I had about 15 (all from my work e-mail, to boot).

Of course, I haven't exactly made my new email address private -- I do want people to be able to reach me, so it's plastered all over this site -- but hopefully it'll take a few months or years for the junk mail to reach its previous proportions.

Tho I have to admit... there's something I miss about getting 150 messages to cull through each day. It was a nice time waster, and it made me feel loved and wanted by people who don't even know me.

Scary Pain

I'm just sitting here at the ol' computer, putzing away the final hours of work before the holiday arrives at 3pm sharp, I yawn, and ...ow.

Ow.

Owwww. Jesus. Mother pus-bucket. That frelling hurts.

I think it's a cramp, right in my back. I start to bend in each direction my torso can go, hoping to stretch it back the way it should go, but its no good.

So I wait it out. I tear up a little. The dogs stare at me anxiously, wondering... is it time for ball?

Then it's better. Ah.

I walk upstairs to the let the canines out for their mid-morning constitutional and ... ow.

GOD DAMMIT.

Of course, now I'm thinking: kidney stone. I've hade them before and it was horrible. Just like this. But this seems different. Too high up in the back, on the right side.

Other thought: Appendix. Still seems too high up though. (As if I'm some kinda internist and know exactly where my innards are at any given time.)

I grab the phone and call the wife. I want to tell her if I'm not here when she gets home, I'm in the hospital. Or passed out in the basement. My dad once tried to withstand the pain of a kidney stone and ended up passed out. Then spent a few days at St. James Mercy, I believe. That's what I was girding up for.

No answer at Bon's desk. I'm thinking next step is either drive myself over to Cayuga Medical or call the local ambulance (a private ambulance service, which, by the way, also owns a local funeral home. Talk about synergy.). I'm very hesitant on the ambulance thing, since I'm still fighting my insurance over who's going to pay for my doctor appointment from last November. Imagine they're glee in making me pay for an emergency room visit for what could be just a muscle cramp...

And then, as if someone had been holding my liver and spine together with pliers and suddenly let go, the pain is gone.

I walked gingerly for a few minutes. Then, just to tempt fate, I started gyrating my abdomen and back, as if I had an invisible hoola hoop going. Nothing.

So, I'm back at the desk. Wondering if I should take the safe route, or avoid the hassle, cost, etc.

Three guesses which way I go.

The Crash after the High

I find few more natural highs in my life than being caught up in a book. Much as any narrative tale can thrill me in any medium, a truly good book that won't let me walk away, that forces me to actually stay in a single uncomfortable chair for an hour longer than my back would like -- that's a feeling I crave and desire. I think it's partially what makes me want to write a book, feeling like I can capture that in myself, tho that still tends to elude me.

The bad part is when the book is finished. Its all about getting to that final page, the denouement that either puts it all together or leaves me asking more questions. Then it's crash and burn. My energy ebbs, my brain wants to shut down as I assimilate it all, figure out just want it means, what the hanging threads will lead to next time (if there is a next time). It's a somewhat uncomfortable way to come down, but the high was so worth it.

Books are my crack, and this summer I've already read 10 good to great novels. After reading the one I finished just a half hour ago, I think I need a full month in the real world just to recover.

So, anyway, thank you J.K. Rowling. I can't wait until 2005 or 2006 for the next one.